The Search for Heinrich Schlögel By Martha BailliePedlar237 pp; $15.95

If “unreliable narrator” is a term familiar to practically anyone who sat through a high school English class, “unreliable archivist” has yet to obtain critical mass. That’s probably because the layered technique of having a mere sketch of a fictional archivist (reliable or otherwise) cobble together another character’s life story based on fragmentary bits of evidence hasn’t come anywhere close to mainstream recognition.

Evidently drawn to and comfortable with left-field and experimental literary approaches, Martha Baillie (The Shape I Gave You; The Incident Report) revels in her unreliable archivist, though. Via that archivist, Baillie explores notions related to fact and conjecture (as well as to appearance and reality), and all the while plays the elusive but smiling taskmaster: She’s going to make the reader sweat — to puzzle and question and work — to comprehend the precise nature of the wonky story that’s unfolding.

As a starting point, the archivist in The Search for Heinrich Schlögel is simultaneously margin and centre. Unnamed and disinclined toward effusive personal revelation, the archivist discloses select details (typically in brief footnotes and asides) about goals, motives, and personal history.

In one footnote, for instance: “Nearly two years ago, on November 24, 2010, I cut Heinrich Schlögel’s photograph from the newspaper. I did so bitten by an intense curiosity, but with little idea of the importance this gesture would have in my life.” The photograph? The young man walking down Toronto’s University Avenue, “possibly being followed by a fox and a full-grown stag.” The archivist refers to a job (at an architecture firm), a formerly tense family history (no siblings; deceased parents in Germany, ostensibly a “flawless duo,” who lost all their money due to a shared gambling addiction), and worries (such as the ecological crisis: “To free my mind [of this] I am allowing Heinrich Schlögel to occupy an increasingly large portion of my thoughts”). Another footnote unveils ethical concerns about the self-assigned task of conveying Heinrich’s strange story: “I’ve relied on my intuition and logic. To determine the truth about someone else’s life is a grave responsibility.”

Heinrich having disappeared right after that photo was snapped, the archivist has control over “the truth” of Heinrich’s story

Interpreting interview material and a painstakingly (not to mention obsessively) acquired archive of Heinrich’s letters, journals, and possessions, the nearly self-erasing archivist is nonetheless front-and-centre. Heinrich having disappeared right after that photo was snapped, the archivist has control over “the truth” of Heinrich’s story. After all, no one else knows to tell it.

Bookish, insular and socially awkward in the archivist’s telling, Heinrich’s days unfold in roughly three movements: his quaint bourgeois childhood (b. 1960) in a southern German hop-growing town, where Inge, his mentally fragile sister, encourages Heinrich to follow a dream of walking in the footsteps of Samuel Hearne, the unlucky English explorer and Hudson’s Bay Company employee; there’s the stark, hallucinatory beauty of his solo trip to the Canadian northeast in 1980; and with his return in 2010, there’s the surprise of his discovery about time’s passage — what he experienced as short weeks turned out to be three decades for the rest of the world.

The fall through a hole in time briefly pondered (“Why was Heinrich plucked…,” asks the archivist, “Was it so he might bear witness? To our collective madness?”), the narrative tracks Heinrich’s perplexed catching up with historical change (he left Frobisher Bay, N.W.T., for example, and returns to Iqaluit, Nunavut) and reconnecting with his family, his sister especially, who left Germany for Toronto.

Based on a northward trip and subsequent Skype conversations with Vicky, an Inuit friend of Heinrich’s during his residency in Pangnirtung, the archivist depicts a befuddled and lost man. His success at comprehending the new world he’s entered (and even other people, like Vicky and her grandmother) is a qualified one, at best. Mostly, he remains a man out of time.

As for the personal importance of the archivist’s intense curiosity, that’s rendered less clearly. The creative act of assembling Heinrich’s story hints at positive growth and movement away from a mundane (if largely undisclosed) routine. But that’s guesswork. A ghostly voice telling the tale of a missing man who fell through a hole in time, the archivist shimmers mysteriously, an apparition whose full story we cannot know.

Brett Josef Grubisic’s recent publications include This Location of Unknown Possibilities, a novel, and Blast, Corrupt, Dismantle, Erase: Contemporary North American Dystopian Literature. He lives in Vancouver and teaches at UBC.

Almost Done!

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.